Pacho Flores returns to the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra to continue his artistic residency. After his visit last December, when he took part in five extraordinary Christmas concerts, he will appear this time at a subscription concert that will take place on May 11 at 7:30 p.m. at the Liverpool Philharmonic Hall, where he will perform Henri Tomasi’s concerto as well as Albares, his own concerto for flugelhorn, all under the baton of Domingo Hindoyan.
The next and last concert of this residency will take place in July with the UK premiere of Altar de Bronce, Gabriela Ortiz’s trumpet concerto that had its World premiere last April with the Galician Symphony Orchestra under Manuel Hernández-Silva, along with Salseando, by Roberto Sierra. That premiere in Galicia was actually also part of an artistic residency, since this season Pacho has been artist-in-residence of these two orchestras, after being last summer at the La Virée Classique festival of the Montreal Symphony Orchestra.
Pacho has just arrived from North America, where he presented the continental premieres of the orchestral version of his own work Cantos y Revueltas with the Montreal Symphony Orchestra under the baton of Rafael Payare; and Historias de Flores y Tangos, by Daniel Freiberg, with the Walla Walla Symphony Orchestra under José Luis Gómez. On his return from Liverpool, he will travel to Colombia to perform again Freiberg’s concerto together with Albares under the baton of Christian Vásquez, before facing an intense summer that includes, in addition to the aforementioned third visit to Liverpool, two important debuts in great summer seasons: at the Hollywood Bowl with the Los Angeles Philharmonic and Gustavo Dudamel, and at the Rady Shell of the San Diego Symphony with Rafael Payare, where he will perform Concierto de Otoño by Arturo Márquez and Salseando by Roberto Sierra, respectively.
José Luis Gómez and Pacho Flores meet with the Walla Walla Symphony Orchestra for the US premiere of Historias de Flores y Tangos, new trumpet concerto by Daniel Freiberg, which will take place at Cordiner Hall next Tuesday, May 2 at 7 p.m. The concert was commissioned jointly by the WW Symphony, Oviedo Filarmonía, Orquesta Sinfónica de Minería and Arctic Philharmonic of Norway. This US premiere closes the cycle of premieres reserved for the orchestras that participated in the shared commission, so that the work becomes now available for any orchestra that wishes to program it.
Gómez and Flores had already met at the Tucson Symphony Orchestra, of which the former is principal conductor, for the US premiere in January 2019 of the Concierto de Otoño by Arturo Márquez, as the orchestra was part of the consortium of commissioners of this piece to the Mexican composer, together with the Nacional de México, the Hyogo PAC Orchestra of Japan and, once again, the Oviedo Filarmonía. Pacho returned to Tucson again as recently as last February, accompanied on this occasion by Manuel Hernández-Silva, with a program that again included a couple of US premieres: Salseando, trumpet concerto by Roberto Sierra, and Manuel Moreno Buendía’s Boceto Sinfónico.
Pacho will return to the US a couple of times in the upcoming months, first in June to perform Salseando by Sierra with the San Diego Symphony and Rafael Payare at the Rady Shell, and then in July for his Los Angeles Philharmonic debut with Gustavo Dudamel at the Hollywood Bowl, performing Márquez’s Concierto de Otoño. For his part, and with a contract still in force until 2024, José Luis Gómez was renewed last summer in his position as Music Director of the Tucson Symphony until 2027, and has recently conducted orchestras such as the Indianapolis Symphony or the US National Symphony Orchestra.
Pacho Flores returns to the Montreal Symphony Orchestra with Rafael Payare after his great success last summer as resident artist of La Virée Classique, the summer festival organized by the Canadian orchestra, where he performed three different programs in his triple facet of trumpeter, composer and conductor. In this next concert, which will take place at the Maison Symphonique on Saturday, April 29 at 9 p.m., they will perform the American premiere of the full orchestra version of Cantos y revueltas, by Pacho Flores himself, whose world premiere took place a month ago with the Arctic Philharmonic of Norway under Manuel Hernández-Silva. On this occasion, Pacho will be accompanied by the cuatrista Héctor Molina and the maraquero Edgardo Jair Acosta.
Pacho Flores has just obtained an enormous success in his debut with the Galician Symphony Orchestra, where he has been a resident artist this season, offering up to three different programs: two symphonic programs, both conducted by Manuel Hernández-Silva, and a chamber music concert with the guitarist and cuatro player Jesús “Pingüino” González. This season Pacho is also an artist in residence at the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, to which he will shortly pay his second visit this year for the UK premiere of Altar de Bronce, by Gabriela Ortiz, whose world premiere took place ago two weeks ago with the Galician Symphony, as both orchestras are part of the commissioning consortium for this new trumpet concert by the Mexican composer, together with the Orquesta de Minería de México, the New World Symphony and the San Diego Symphony.
After this concert with the Montreal Symphony Orchestra, Pacho will travel to the state of Washington, in the USA, for the last premiere of Daniel Freiberg’s Historias de Flores y Tangos with the Walla Walla Symphony Orchestra under the baton of José Luis Gómez. This Freiberg concert had its first premiere in Spain with the Oviedo Filarmonía, then with the Orquesta de Minería in Mexico and more recently in Norway with Manuel Hernández-Silva, as afore mentioned.
Pacho Flores makes his debut with the Quebec Symphony Orchestra on 1 and 2 March under the direction of Anu Tali, with whom he will perform Haydn’s Trumpet Concerto as well as the Canadian premiere of Salseando, the concert composed by Roberto Sierra that has been recently premiered by Pacho in the US with the Tucson Symphony Orchestra and Manuel Hernández-Silva. Salseando is part of the project of shared commissions for new trumpet concerts promoted by Pacho Flores and managed worldwide by his agency, ACM Concerts. It was commissioned by the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, the Región de Murcia Symphony Orchestra, Orquestra Sinfônica do Estado de São Paulo, and the Orchestre National de Bordeaux-Aquitaine. The first premiere took place in Liverpool with Domingo Hindoyan on 9 January 2020, the Brazilian premiere on 31 March, 1 and 2 April 2022 under Carlos Miguel Prieto, while Hernández-Silva was in charge of the Spanish and French premieres on 17 December 2020 and 3 June 2022, respectively. After the recent US and forthcoming Canadian premiere, Salseando will land on the stands of the San Diego Symphony Orchestra under the baton of Rafael Payare and later return to the Liverpool Philharmonic, which will also record it for Pacho’s next album. The 2023/24 season will also see its Polish premiere, again with conductor Manuel Hernández-Silva.
Other concerts in this project are Concierto de otoño by Arturo Márquez, Concerto Venezolano by Paquito D’Rivera, Danzas Latinas by Efraín Oscher, Caballos mágicos by Christian Lindberg, Historias de Flores y Tangos by Daniel Freiberg, and Altar de Bronze by Gabriela Ortiz. The first three of them, along with Sierra’s Salseando, have already completed their cycle of premieres with the commissioning orchestras and begun a fruitful career. Lindberg and Freiberg concerts are currently being premiered, and Altar de Bronce, the last concert to join the project, will soon begin its premiere cycle with the Galician Symphony Orchestra and Hernández-Silva, to continue with the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, Minería Symphony Orchestra, New World Symphony and San Diego Symphony.
Meanwhile, there have also been other premieres such as Concierto Mambí, by Igmar Alderete, with the Cordoba Orchestra and Carlos Domínguez-Nieto, or Invocation, by Eleanor Alberga, with the London Schools Orchestra and Peter Ash. Other premieres are scheduled, such as the new concert by Tuomas Turriago with the Tampere Filharmonia and Christian Vásquez, or Divertimento Caribeño, by Sonia Morales, with the Central Ohio Symphony Orchestra and Jaime Morales conducting, among others to be announced in due course.
Pacho Flores, Leo Rondón and Manuel Hernández-Silva meet again, this time together with the Gran Canaria Philmarmonic Orchestra, to offer a program that includes Kalinnikov’s Symphony No. 1 and two trumpet concerts: the Concerto Venezolano, by Paquito D’ Rivera, and Cantos y Revueltas, by Pacho himself. The concert will take place at the Alfredo Kraus Auditorium in Las Palmas on Saturday, May 6 at 8:00 p.m. These two trumpet concerts have several things in common, such as the fact that they were composed for a wide range of instruments of the trumpet family that include trumpets, cornets and flugelhorns, all with four pistons and manufactured by STOMVI: cornet in C, trumpet in C, cornet in G, flugelhorn in B flat and cornet in F for the Concerto Venezolano, and flugelhorn in B flat, cornet in D and trumpet in C for Cantos y Revueltas, which means that Pacho comes on stage with 6 different instruments.
Another thing both works have in common is the presence of the Venezuelan cuatro; in the case of D’Rivera, integrated as part of the orchestra, and in the case of Flores, as co-soloist with the trumpet —not in in vain this piece bears the subtitle Fantasia concertante for trumpet, Venezuelan cuatro and strings. Rondón is one of the most outstanding virtuosi of this instrument and has collaborated with ensembles such as the Quatuor Debussy, L’Arpeggiata by Christina Pluhar or the Mexican tenor Rolando Villazón, as well as with orchestras such as the Real Filharmonía de Galicia, Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, Orchestre National de l’Ile de France, Orquesta Sinfónica de la Región de Murcia, Valencia Orchestra, Castilla y León Symphony Orchestra, Extremadura Symphony Orchestra, Navarre Symphony Orchestra, Tunisia Symphony Orchestra or Malaga Philharmonic, and he will soon debut with the Gran Canaria Philharmonic. Future engagements will take him to Sweden and Norway.
The Concerto Venezolano is a joint commission between the Minería Symphony Orchestra, the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, the Valencia Orchestra and the San Diego Symphony Orchestra, which have premiered it under the baton of conductors Carlos Miguel Prieto, Domingo Hindoyan, Manuel Hernández-Silva and Rafael Payare, respectively. Cantos y Revueltas was premiered by the Real Filharmonía de Galicia and Manuel Hernández-Silva, and is the main work on the homonymous album by Deutsche Grammophon.
